Two Minutes to Midnight
by ajattra
Summary: Season 6 AU. Dean receives a distressed phone call and he leaves to help an old rival he isn't sure he can even trust. But hot on the heels of Bela Talbot always comes trouble: this time in the form of Xipe Totec, who chases more alluring prey. Dean/Bela.
1. Two Minutes to Midnight

**1. TWO MINUTES TO MIDNIGHT**

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><p>Xipe Totec observed the weak creature at his feet and then lowered his rugged knife, wiping the blood from its blade into the front of his leathery dress. He realized to his disappointment that the whimpering creature cried for mercy much easier these days. She held no promise of fulfilling her potential by overcoming the pain and pleasure and learning their ways in order to become one of them one day.<p>

No, instead she held onto her humanity at the cost of her future, trying her best to lock herself inside happier memories. It was sad that he could see so clearly how she didn't not possess too many of those. In the beginning he had enjoyed breaking her spirit by revisiting the darker corners of her mind, invading this fertile Promised Land in hopes of being of the catalyst that would bring about her change. All those times her father would lock the door and press against her, knowing how ripe she was for his incestuous touch; they still haunted her.

But using her past trauma against her had quickly lost its charm, when it became obvious that she had escaped this hell on earth at the young age of 14 and never looked back since. No shadow of her father could tease her in this Hell after she had learned to harden herself against his attacks, which is why the demon had sought out new ways to know her flesh. After overwhelming pain he had introduced her to otherworldly pleasures in familiar shapes, and ah, how she had enjoyed the forbidden fruit, eating it ever so greedily.

The Labyrinth was no place for a creature like her. She had responded to their siren's call, not out of curiosity, but out of pressing need. She had stolen the box after it had become an obsession. A survivor willing to do anything to avoid paying her dues – usually this type was perfect for their intentions, but this one was all about suppressed emotions. Oh, how she longed to be trustworthy and calm, when her pain called her to act out like a wild animal, crying out for help and harming others, who came across her path.

He had come to know her intimately through these long years. At first he had been bitter and petty towards her, for inserting herself in the middle of his well-calculated plans. He had chased a far more alluring prey with his Leviathan Configuration, but this mortal had intervened at a critical time, thus helping his prey to escape his grasp. The cenobytes were powerful within the Labyrinth, inside Leviathan's sacred flesh, yet when they entered the mortal realm, they needed to be called and could only stay as long as their invitation was valid. The configurations that were guarded by demonic beasts travelled amid the humans, singing their song and luring in potentials and they were the only doorway between the Labyrinth and the mortal world, which is why it had taken Xipe Totec many precious years to influence the mortal world according to his will and bring his special configuration to the right pair of willing hands. And then this pathetic soul had interfered at the moment of victory and taken the box.

And she had come to them, scared for her life and the mundane horrors of Satan's hell. She had made a deal with a demon and after her time was up, she had opened the box with the attempt to fool destiny. Instead of demons, she had met the cenobytes, the chosen immortals of Leviathan, the guardians of hidden pleasures and pain. Some might say she would've been better off embracing the consequences of her own actions, for the Labyrinth in all its glory was everything Satan had ever wanted from Hell. But Leviathan was older than the angels and torn from Purgatory by God, banished alone into the Labyrinth, until it had found a way to bend the rules. The cenobytes had become Leviathan's angels and demons, and it had given them free hands to realize its vision. The Labyrinth existed outside the tired charade between good and evil to serve the needs of the flesh for new experiences and sensations.

This is also why the end of days for the mortal world had barely even been recognized; Leviathan had stirred and gazed upon its younger sibling, Satan, and found him to be an inferior being unworthy of the attention of the Labyrinth. This had all happened with little exposure, so only the highest ranking cenobytes even knew about it: perhaps only the members of the Vasa Iniquitatis. Xipe Totec, as the favourite son and lover of Leviathan, had obviously sensed the disarray Satan's return had caused and wondered whether it was too late for him to find his prey now.

Anger had followed, an emotion he had not recognized in centuries, and he had unleashed on this poor soul, who had robbed him of his victory. He had flayed her skin and displayed her in front of his congregation like work of art, her mouth sowed shut and her body pierced by metal chains. He had carved Leviathan's name onto her skull and spoken to her about the end of her world, and the intense anger and hatred this knowledge had stirred in him. She had listened in silence, her broken figure up for display and her shame burning brighter than ever. At this time she had not had a name for two years.

But the end of days had been averted. Satan had been defeated and thrown back inside his cage. And the chaos that the Vasa Iniquitatis fought with their last breath had turned into predictable and lovable order again. Xipe Totec had lost his interest in punishing her and she had received pleasure again. The emotions that had risen inside the cenobyte had calmed down like they had never existed in the first place. The pinheaded hedonist, who had taken her beyond this world, had reverted back into the shadowy figure that barely paid any attention to her.

Until today.

Bela was weary, suffering from withdrawal that came after intense sensations of either pain or pleasure. She had made love to a ghost born from her own unfulfilled desires, until the pleasant daydream had become a nightmare of torture. Now Xipe Totec, Leviathan's favourite son, stood before her and observed with iron calm. Blood was dripping down her naked body as she hung from the hooks, barely registering what went on around her. She knew him though: she could feel him under her skin, like an itch she wanted to scratch until it bled. She wanted to push every pin on his head right through his skull and watch as he cried for mercy.

Thinking back all she could remember about opening Pandora's box was the clock ticking to midnight, the pressure, the humiliation and regret. She remembered glancing at the phone, hearing the echo of Dean Winchester's mocking voice tear her apart. There'd been no joy or curiosity, just plain terror. Well now that terror seemed miniscule compared to the two years she had spent in the Labyrinth. The creature before her was more horrifying than any demon. This fate was surely worse than Hell.

The room felt warm and the lit candles created a circle of light that embraced Bela Talbot's naked body. The light excluded Xipe Totec from its circle though: the lead cenobite kept to the dark. Then he made a small movement with his leather-clad finger and the chains began descending from the ceiling slowly. Bela's feet touched the ground, but knowing her chance when she saw it, she feigned weakness and fell to the ground. The hooks tore through her skin, making groan in agony, but it helped sell the act.

He didn't make a move to help her, merely twisted the Leviathan Configurement in his hands like it was a harmless plaything. He watched as Bela tore the hooks from her flesh mutely, even though her face betrayed her suffering. "Do you still desperately cling onto salvation?" the demon asked softly, its voice carrying a hint of curiosity.

"Is there an edge to hell I can jump off?" she responded, sounding out of breath. The defiance in her voice was sharp though and it would've struck a human like a blade, but one needed harsher truths to cut Xipe Totec.

"Surely you know by now that there is no escape?" the flayed god spoke to her softly. They shared a long gaze before he put the Leviathan configuration on the floor and simply walked away.

Bela stared at the sharp diamond-shaped puzzle in front of her with desperation and then glanced at the demon, only to find that he was gone. This was the cruellest torture yet, but she took the box anyway and began fidgeting it in her hands with desperate rage. The world around her began to shake and as one part of the diamond unlocked, hooks started to fly at her again. They tore at her skin, but couldn't pry her hands from the box. She screamed until her voice was hoarse and her fingers bled onto the configuration in her hands. The hooks shot up from the ground, the walls, the roof… They flayed her, tearing her skin off, leaving nothing but bloody muscles and bones behind. She nearly closed her eyes and let go of the box when her scalp fell to the floor along with her hair, but through some miracle she managed to stay focused. Her pain threshold simply was beyond mortal comprehension now.

When the box finally opened, it covered her pathetic form in light that even the hooks couldn't kill. The chains that had cut into her flesh tried to hold her still, but they couldn't stop the light from invading her cells. And then she was no more. The cut chains fell to the floor where she'd once sat and the flayed god laughed in the distance.

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><p>He was driving too fast on these narrow country roads – especially since it'd been raining all night – but he didn't care as long as he got to where he was going. Every minute seemed to stretch into infinity while the tape player played his Journey cassette, trying its best to erase any room for thought in the car. It didn't help, for he'd already failed at his attempt to close everything inside. He'd done it for years, so when the call came in the black of night while he was embracing Lisa in her sleep, the walls he'd carefully built around <em>her <em>came crashing down.

Her heaving woke him and the sound of her agonized voice begging for help made him jump out of bed. Why had his instincts driven him to chase her when all she'd ever given him was a knife to the back? He'd wanted to trust her, but his hopes had gotten shot down again and again. So when he'd hung up on her plight, saying, _I'll see you in hell_, he'd fully meant it. Sam was the one, who'd been more lenient with her, but Sam wasn't here now was he?

He'd told her they would've helped her had she simply asked for it instead of screwing them over, but hearing her actually speak the words after two years had frozen him still. For a moment Dean had forgotten all about their sordid history and thought about his own experiences in Hell. She'd sounded broken, so defeated and humble in her request – like she knew she had no right to ask him, and yet had called anyway.

He gripped the steering wheel in his anger. Lisa had woken up as well, asking why he was packing, and Dean hadn't had an answer for her. When he'd gotten downstairs and started looking for his gun and car keys, she'd demanded his attention by standing in his way, forcing him to deal with her. He'd promised her that the hunting was over, so why?

_To help a friend_, he'd said, feeling how wrong those words felt on his lips.

_She has no one else_, he'd continued, the pain searing through his pores like poison he'd ingested. She wasn't a friend, or family or even a lover, but for a short time she'd been a fate companion to him. And Dean knew what hell did to you; how it changed everything, draining the joy and every other emotion from you, until there was but a shell left.

If Bela had succumbed, if she was a demon now, there was nothing left for Dean to do, but be merciful. He would have to kill her.

_She's someone special, isn't she?_ Lisa had asked with a quivering voice, arms folded across her chest. She'd looked so vulnerable; she'd been willing to love him despite his flaws. She was a good woman that didn't deserve his shit.

Dean had walked up to her, trying to be the man he longed to be, and taken her by the nape of her neck, pulling her close to kiss her doubts away. He'd wanted to prove to her that he had no feelings for anyone but her, yet strangely the kiss had felt more like goodbye.

When he'd walked out the door, he'd simply said, _in all likelihood, I'll have to kill her_.

He had a bayonet resting on the passenger seat even now. If this was a trick, he'd know. No one escaped Hell without repercussions, so it was more likely that Dean was being baited. He was surprised himself that Bela was working so well as a bait for him. Yet there wasn't a doubt in his mind: He needed to see through this, one way or another.

TBC


	2. Skin

**2. SKIN**

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><p>This was the place where Dean had unceremoniously left her to die alone. Bela had come to kill Sam in hopes of wriggling out of her own demon deal, so when the brothers had tricked her here alone, she'd had nowhere to go at midnight. Dean had supposed she'd stayed in the room, tried to barricade it, but eventually the hounds had got to her. Yet there had been no body – Dean knew because he'd checked. He'd wanted to give her a proper burial, but the hellhounds had left nothing behind when they'd torn her apart: No blood, no weapons, not even a damn sign of a battle.<p>

Dean dug up his duffle bag from the trunk of the car, holding steadily onto his shotgun that he'd already loaded with salt. He was ready to pull the trigger and dig a grave, yet he wasn't so sure that he was ready to find the obnoxious and selfish woman he'd known fully intact.

He approached the door with determination. It'd be over quickly if she was changed, but he didn't think he could drive right on back home afterwards. He would need some time to drown the demons she'd awoken inside by just calling. Her voice had awoken something else as well, something he couldn't quite place, but knew he'd lost when he'd lost Sam. Maybe it was hope? If Bela had escaped Hell maybe she knew something…

Even the room was the same, he realized upon searching his perimeters. He hadn't walked into that room for two years. He'd avoided coming back to this motel, knowing that being here would force him to confront her death. Dean tried to be a good soldier up to a fault; he tried to follow the example his father, even if it meant less to him now than it had while his father had still been alive. But the tendency to avoid emotions, to avoid contact, it had failed sometimes and he'd let people get to him. Perhaps he'd chosen Lisa, because she was safe and shunned countless others, because he'd known they were not. Bela had been anything but safe.

Gripping his shotgun he opened the door and realized it wasn't even locked. Dean entered the pitch black darkness and he was embraced by a thick silence. A moment after he began hearing the quiet sobs. He reached for the light switch, ready to act, to blow her and anyone helping her to hell, but when the light came on in the doorway, he quickly realized this didn't look like a set up.

Something moved in the back of the room near the beds. "Dean?" the sobbing voice asked, drawing his attention fully. He could see a humane shape sitting between the beds and he chose to approach with caution. The closer he got, the better the view began to open up to him: The figure was bald and wrapped in a blanket. He could easily see she was drenched in blood, for she was completely red in the thin light. Feeling pity fill his insides, Dean ignored his teachings and put the shotgun on the bed, walking up to her.

"Bela," he whispered hoarsely, finally seeing the horrifying truth now that the distance between them was short: This naked being in front of him was without skin, but still vaguely recognizable as the snarky woman he'd once known. What Dean had perceived as mere blood was in actuality muscles, tendons and bone, all bloodied and bare. Her bloodshot eyes spoke the truth when he saw hope light in them.

Dean had seen demons do a great deal of horrifying things to both mortals and one another, but the sight of her still made his insides crawl. He knew Hell in its sadistic glory, because he had once been one of its torturers, but seeing her like this made him think he still hadn't seen enough, didn't know half of what the demons were capable of. He didn't avert his eyes from her though, not even when he lifted the bag on the bed and kneeled before her. He had no words for this.

"So this is what happens when you stab a Winchester in the back too many times?" she asked softly, trying her best to summon back the old carefree illusion of herself. Dean merely blinked at the comment, all of his witty remarks stuck in his incredibly dry throat. So Bela reached for him with her bloodied hand, touching gently at his chin, as if to make sure he was real.

Dean pulled away when her bloody finger touched him and he pointed his attention towards the bag, starting his search for gauze. He wiped the blood from his chin a moment later, still feeling a chill to the bone because of her touch.

"I wasn't sure if you'd come," Bela confessed, knowing full well that she'd screwed Dean and his brother enough times to be considered an enemy rather than a friend. Yet she'd hoped and hope had kept her alive.

"I didn't think I'd come either," he responded, anger seething through his voice and the violent way he conducted his search. Yet when he found what he was looking for he seemed to calm down finally.

"Why did they let you go?" he asked, holding onto the gauze, nearly crushing it. She'd caught him caring for her, and he didn't like that. Things would've been so much easier, if she'd just been a demon and he could've blown her brains out and remembered Bela in kinder light, because of that tragedy.

"They didn't," she responded her eyes following his figure almost obsessively. She hugged her skinless knees, craving for warmth. Her skinless body was yearning to be touched and all he could do was accuse her. "I ran," she explained with irony conviction.

"Bullshit!" Dean yelled, throwing the gauze at her feet. "No one escapes Hell. Trust me, I know: Needed an angel to pull out my sorry ass!"

Bela looked pensive for a moment before sighing, "I wasn't in Hell, Dean. I chose something much worse."

Dean didn't know what to think. Worse than Hell? Fuck, no way! He'd lived through it and he didn't believe anything could compete with it. Anger was soaring through his body for her lies, but he had to remind himself of the horrors she'd lived through. Who was he to say she was even right in the head at the moment? Thinking this helped him calm down some and Dean approached her patiently beginning to bandage her hands with the gauze. He didn't say anything, but Bela could see the disbelief. She chose silence as well and settled to watch his silent efforts to help her.

Once her hands were bandaged Dean made an uncomfortable sound and looked as she rose silently and removed the blanket from her shoulders. She stood before him, completely naked and vulnerable. He found it difficult to continue but moved next to her anyway and looked at her bloodied flesh. The sight brought forth memories he'd tried his best to bury: nightmares and death and the smell of blood. He'd given up the life of a hunter because of this. Dean cleared his throat with unease. "I need more bandages. There's no way I'll get everything covered," he explained, unable to look away from her.

She was still recognizable, especially when he looked into her eyes. Her expressionless face burned his memory, forced him to imagine her the way she'd been: beautiful, confident, and treacherous. Had she changed any? He knew he was a different man, than the Dean Winchester, who'd gone to hell and risen to stop an apocalypse. Her sentence had been three times as long. He could picture them peeling her beauty and confidence step by step and leaving behind nothing but a young girl. He'd felt his own mortality and adolescence clearly in their hands.

"Please don't go," she begged and her voice shivered. These weren't crocodile tears meant to deceive him. They were the tears of a victim. She moved her hand slowly, as if to show him she meant no harm, to his shoulder and Dean let her. He watched her closely, sensing the anticipation in the air. Was forgiveness an option? Maybe not, but he needed to help her, because had asked him. He didn't owe her anything. It was simply the truth that was carved into his heart: Without Sam and Bobby, this could've been him. If he didn't help her, he was rotten to the core.

"Fine," he said and moved out of her reach. He then went to the closest bed and tore off the sheet. Dean held the white sheet in his hands for a moment before he turned back to her and wrapped it around her. The white sheet was quickly stained in blood and as Dean's hands still lingered on her shoulders, he too felt its moist touch through the sheet. He could feel her shivering in the cold as she had nothing to shield her. Bela's eyes were avoiding him. He too felt uncomfortable near her like this.

"Take the bed," he said, turning his eyes towards the wall. "You need to keep warm or we'll have more problems on our hands."

She nodded in silence and took a small step away from him, but his hands were still on her shoulders and their grip prevented her from going further. Bela breathed loudly, hoping that he wouldn't make her say the words, but she could tell things were far from clear between them. "I don't know if I can repay this," she finally admitted. Fear clutched her breast and she no longer knew whether he would strike her down or embrace her. For a long moment the silence brewed between them and breathing hurt like hell.

"Worry about that later," he finally answered and glanced at her. She could tell he was in disarray, but didn't comment further. Bela sat on the bed and buried herself in the sheet and blankets there. She laid on the bed quietly and watched as Dean paced around the room, not knowing what to think or feel. Eventually she allowed herself to fall asleep and the exhaustion to catch up. She hadn't slept in a long time.

Dean watched her sleep gun in hand and he sat on a chair near the window. He had no idea what to do. This wasn't what he'd expected and he knew very well this was the easy part of this gig. The hard part would be when someone or something would come after her, or when he'd need to find a way to regrow her skin, because he couldn't hide her like this. The hard part was looking at her like this and feeling something inside him move slowly: a knot made of hurt and regret.

TBC


End file.
